Leon, Joseph (Jigel)

Son of Matilda and Shlomo was born on March 8, 1926, in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Yosef finished elementary school and four grades in the Gymnasium but in 1941 was expelled from school because he was Jewish and had to stop his studies. Was a member of the Betar Jewish National Youth League and among those listed for immigration to the Struma, but his parents objected to this, and was thus saved from death when the ship was sunk by a German submarine on the Black Sea. in 1948, he volunteered for a course of the Haganah and at the end of the war he and his friends boarded the illegal immigrant ship that arrived at the shore of Tel Aviv on May 10, 1948. Yosef was drafted into the 7th Brigade and after several days of training, his unit was transferred to the Latrun sector, with the entry of the Arab Legion into combat, and the road to it was cut off by the legion of Latrun. The mission was assigned to the newly formed Brigade 7, and the units that had come out on the operation encountered better enemy forces so they had to retreat, Yosef fell on the 15th of Iyar (05.24.1948). On the 11th of Adar (28/02/1950) was laid to rest at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.